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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | FILES | KNOWN BUGS | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON |
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KILLALL(1) User Commands KILLALL(1)
killall - kill processes by name
killall [-Z, --context pattern] [-e, --exact]
[-g, --process-group] [-i, --interactive] [-n, --ns PID]
[-o, --older-than TIME] [-q, --quiet] [-r, --regexp] [-s, --signal
SIGNAL, -SIGNAL] [-u, --user user] [-v, --verbose] [-w, --wait]
[-y, --younger-than TIME] [-I, --ignore-case] [-V, --version] [--]
name ...
killall -l, --list
killall -V, --version
killall sends a signal to all processes running any of the
specified commands. If no signal name is specified, SIGTERM is
sent.
Signals can be specified either by name (e.g. -HUP or -SIGHUP) or
by number (e.g. -1) or by option -s.
If the command name is not regular expression (option -r) and
contains a slash (/), processes executing that particular file
will be selected for killing, independent of their name.
killall returns a zero return code if at least one process has
been killed for each listed command, or no commands were listed
and at least one process matched the -u and -Z search criteria.
killall returns non-zero otherwise.
A killall process never kills itself (but may kill other killall
processes).
-e, --exact
Require an exact match for very long names. If a command
name is longer than 15 characters, the full name may be
unavailable (i.e. it is swapped out). In this case,
killall will kill everything that matches within the first
15 characters. With -e, such entries are skipped. killall
prints a message for each skipped entry if -v is specified
in addition to -e.
-I, --ignore-case
Do case insensitive process name match.
-g, --process-group
Kill the process group to which the process belongs. The
kill signal is only sent once per group, even if multiple
processes belonging to the same process group were found.
-i, --interactive
Interactively ask for confirmation before killing.
-l, --list
List all known signal names.
-n, --ns
Match against the PID namespace of the given PID. The
default is to match against all namespaces.
-o, --older-than
Match only processes that are older (started before) the
time specified. The time is specified as a float then a
unit. The units are s,m,h,d,w,M,y for seconds, minutes,
hours, days, weeks, months and years respectively.
-q, --quiet
Do not complain if no processes were killed.
-r, --regexp
Interpret process name pattern as a POSIX extended regular
expression, per regex(3).
-s, --signal, -SIGNAL
Send this signal instead of SIGTERM.
-u, --user
Kill only processes the specified user owns. Command names
are optional.
-v, --verbose
Report if the signal was successfully sent.
-V, --version
Display version information.
-w, --wait
Wait for all killed processes to die. killall checks once
per second if any of the killed processes still exist and
only returns if none are left. Note that killall may wait
forever if the signal was ignored, had no effect, or if the
process stays in zombie state.
-y, --younger-than
Match only processes that are younger (started after) the
time specified. The time is specified as a float then a
unit. The units are s,m,h,d,w,M,y for seconds, minutes,
hours, days, weeks, Months and years respectively.
-Z, --context
Specify security context: kill only processes having
security context that match with given extended regular
expression pattern. Must precede other arguments on the
command line. Command names are optional.
/proc location of the proc file system
Killing by file only works for executables that are kept open
during execution, i.e. impure executables can't be killed this
way.
Be warned that typing killall name may not have the desired effect
on non-Linux systems, especially when done by a privileged user.
killall -w doesn't detect if a process disappears and is replaced
by a new process with the same PID between scans.
If processes change their name, killall may not be able to match
them correctly.
killall has a limit of names that can be specified on the command
line. This figure is the size of an unsigned long integer
multiplied by 8. For most 32 bit systems the limit is 32 and
similarly for a 64 bit system the limit is usually 64.
kill(1), fuser(1), pgrep(1), pidof(1), pkill(1), ps(1), kill(2),
regex(3).
This page is part of the psmisc (Small utilities that use the
/proc filesystem) project. Information about the project can be
found at ⟨https://gitlab.com/psmisc/psmisc⟩. If you have a bug
report for this manual page, see
⟨https://gitlab.com/psmisc/psmisc/issues⟩. This page was obtained
from the project's upstream Git repository
⟨https://gitlab.com/psmisc/psmisc.git⟩ on 2025-08-11. (At that
time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
repository was 2025-06-06.) If you discover any rendering
problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is
a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
(which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
[email protected]
psmisc 2023-06-17 KILLALL(1)
Pages that refer to this page: fuser(1), kill(1@@procps-ng), pgrep(1), pmsignal(1), skill(1), start-stop-daemon(8)
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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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